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Patrick Montgomery left the Army and founded the KC Cattle Company with little farming experience.
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His startup took off overnight—then he had to learn how to scale quickly.
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KC Cattle Company has thrived as demand for premium American wagyu beef continues to grow across the country.
This spoken essay is based on an interview with Patrick Montgomery, former Army Ranger and founder of KC Cattle Company, an American wagyu farm. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I thought I would spend my whole life in Special Operations as part of the First Ranger Battalion, but when life had other plans and in 2014 I left the army, I really didn’t expect to become a wagyu ranch.
I went back to school at the University of Missouri with plans to become a large animal veterinarian. I loved the hands-on work, the adrenaline rush of working with farm animals and a career where I could stay in touch with the outdoors.
But when I started crunching the numbers to open my clinic — six figures in student debt on top of a $60,000 salary — it just didn’t add up. Around this time, I also took entrepreneurship classes. I found myself drawn to balance sheets and business models as much as anatomy diagrams and started thinking about how to make something of my own.
In 2016, when I felt like I was selling my soul to a defense contractor during a job interview, I called my wife and told her I was either starting a company or going back to the military. She didn’t miss a moment to ask what kind of company we were going to start.
Thus was born the KC Cattle Company, an idea born out of my twin passions for animals and business, even though I had almost no farming experience.
I spent the next few years paying what I called “tuition at the school of hard knocks” until I figured it all out the hard way. I interned at veterinary clinics, worked at research farms and learned from anyone who would let me tag along.
I eventually bought 420 acres of land about 45 minutes northwest of Kansas City and started raising a few dozen head of cattle. We now have about 200 animals on the ranch, with partnerships across the country, many of them with fellow veterans.
At the time, I didn’t know much about wagyu other than that it was premium beef with an incredible marbling score. The Japanese use a rating scale of 1 to 12, where in the US the “best” beef barely reaches a 4. Our average wagyu is now around a 7, with some cuts as high as a 10. This is beef that really melts in your mouth.
Wagyu cattle are expensive to buy, feed and raise. They take longer to mature and produce less beef than other breeds. However, I believed that if we were going to charge a premium, we had to produce the best beef in the country and treat our animals along the way.
A happy cow makes better beef. This is something you see in their behavior. When our cattle lie down and chew their baby, it is a sign that they are happy and healthy.
We don’t use cattle sticks or horses to move them around – anything that causes stress is bad for both the animal and the end product. Our approach is not as strict as Japan’s, but it is far superior to most traditional American practices. The result is high-quality beef, raised ethically with respect for animals and the environment.
Until 2018 I shifted my focus from restaurant sales to e-commerce. I thought online retail could help me reach more customers, but we struggled to differentiate ourselves – until one day, everything changed.
When Food & Wine named our wagyu the best in the world in 2019, we went from 20 orders a week to 12,000 a night. We were completely blown away. The next day, I remember thinking, “Okay, now we have to figure out how to keep up.”
Then the pandemic hit. As the big meatpackers closed and grocery store shelves emptied, our small operation suddenly became a lifeline for people looking to buy high-quality beef straight from the source. KC Cattle Company became very popular and business was booming for two years.
After the pandemic subsided and inflation hit, things changed again. Feed prices have risen. Fuel consumption has increased. Consumers began to abandon premium purchases.
For a while, it seemed like we went from being a pandemic success story to a fight for survival. But this is where my ranger mindset kicked in: you don’t give up – you adapt.
Out of that pressure came my second company, Valor Provisions. I realized that the American food system was fragile, and that small farmers were squeezed by geography, logistics, and a lack of marketing power. Valor Provisions connects those producers—from veteran-owned pork farms to Montana cattle ranches—with customers across the country at prices that rival grocery stores. It has to do with increasing the resilience of our domestic food supply.
When I started KC Cattle Company, wagyu beef felt like a niche market. It is now predicted that by 2026 it will exceed 3.5 billion US dollars. The demand for premium quality, traceable and ethically raised beef is growing rapidly – and we are in the middle of that increase.
We also considered what KC Cattle Company does best: premium wagyu for special occasions, corporate gifts and loyal customers who value their food history.
Meanwhile, Valor Provisions is growing rapidly, helping American manufacturers capture their share of this expanding market.
In the military, 1% of Americans help protect the other 99%. It’s the same in agriculture – about 1% of the population produces food for everyone else. That sense of service drives everything I do.
For me, food safety is a matter of national security. If we can’t feed our people, everything else becomes irrelevant.
I never aspired to become a rancher or run a wagyu company. But I decided to build something that mattered: supporting veterans, strengthening American agriculture, and proving that passion and perseverance can make up for inexperience.
Read the original article on Business Insider.
